It is not a secret that the U.S. government is funding Syrian rebels, who include members of Al Qaeda, but this may be the first time they have openly called for “two cheers” in praise of the radical Islamic Jihadists fighting against the Assad regime. I find it odd that the title is so complimentary, yet in the article it specifically says, “Of course, Syrian Islamists are no friends of the United States–merely the enemies of one of its enemies.” This is like smiling while delivering horrible news of betrayal. When I read that, I got this picture in my head of a woman smiling as she says to her friend “Let’s go celebrate your marriage with ice cream! Of course, your husband is cheating on you.” Backwards is forwards, up is down, wrong is right, logic is insanity.

“In March, he launched an ETF version of his popular Pimco Total Return Fund (PTTRX) – the world’s biggest mutual fund, with more than $260 billion in assets. The Pimco Total Return ETF (NYSE: BOND) quickly attracted $2.1 billion in total deposits and has outpaced the S&P 500 by more than 5% so far.

“But even bonds – both government-backed and corporate – can’t escape the realities of a no-growth economy.

“According to global economic trend forecaster Chris Martenson, a former VP of a Fortune 300 company, the historical growth rates investors have come to expect – in every asset class – are no longer mathematically possible.

“Right now, there are dangerous economic constraints,” he said, “mainly created by failed government policies, which show exponential growth in our markets is impossible.”

(Reuters) – U.S. regulators directed five of the country’s biggest banks, including Bank of America Corp and Goldman Sachs Group Inc, to develop plans for staving off collapse if they faced serious problems, emphasizing that the banks could not count on government help.

The two-year-old program, which has been largely secret until now, is in addition to the “living wills” the banks crafted to help regulators dismantle them if they actually do fail. It shows how hard regulators are working to ensure that banks have plans for worst-case scenarios and can act rationally in times of distress.

“Lawyers from The Rutherford Institute represented Brandon Raub during the three-hour hearing today at the John Randolph Medical Center and released a statement, saying Raub has been ordered to “up to 30 days’ further confinement in a VA psych ward” after “government officials againpointed to Raub’s Facebook posts as the sole reason for their concern and for his continued incarceration.”

“Both the FBI and Secret Service said Raub was not arrested or charged, but the Rutherford Institute statement points out that “if the police have put handcuffs on you and you’re being held against your will, that qualifies as an arrest.”

“A mysterious character who sported sunglasses even at night, Richard Aoki was a militant leader of the Third World strike and an activist with the Asian American Political Alliance at UC Berkeley.

“The revelation about Aoki’s role as an informant emerged from FBI files and an interview with the agent who says he recruited Aoki. Rosenfeld spent the last 30 years researching the history of the FBI and radicals in Berkeley for his new book, “Subversives: The FBI’s War on Student Radicals, and Reagan’s Rise to Power,” publishing tomorrow.”

Richard Masato Aoki, an early member of the Black Panthers, takes part in a protest near the UC Berkeley campus in 1969.Photo: Lonnie Wilson, Oakland Tribune / SF

“The man who gave the Black Panther Party some of its first firearms and weapons training – which preceded fatal shootouts with Oakland police in the turbulent 1960s – was an undercover FBI informer, according to a former bureau agent and an FBI report.

One of the Bay Area’s most prominent radical activists of the era, Richard Masato Aoki was known as a fierce militant who touted his street-fighting abilities. He was a member of several radical groups before joining and arming the Panthers, whose members received international notoriety for brandishing weapons during patrols of the Oakland police and a protest at the state Capitol.

Aoki went on to work for 25 years as a teacher, counselor and administrator at the Peralta Community College District, and after his suicide in 2009, he was revered as a fearless radical.

But unbeknownst to his fellow activists, Aoki had served as an FBI intelligence informant, covertly filing reports on a wide range of Bay Area political groups, according to the bureau agent who recruited him.

That agent, Burney Threadgill Jr., recalled that he approached Aoki in the late 1950s, about the time Aoki was graduating from Berkeley High School. He asked Aoki if he would join left-wing groups and report to the FBI.

“He was my informant. I developed him,” Threadgill said in an interview. “He was one of the best sources we had.”

“In his latest exclusive dispatch from Deir el-Zour province, Ghaith Abdul-Ahad meets fighters who have left the Free Syrian Army for the discipline and ideology of global jihad.”

A member of a jihadist group sprays the slogan ‘No Islam without Jihad’ in Arabic on the wall at a border crossing with Turkey. Photograph: Bulent Kilic/AFP/Getty Images

“As they stood outside the commandeered government building in the town of Mohassen, it was hard to distinguish Abu Khuder’s men from any other brigade in the Syrian civil war, in their combat fatigues, T-shirts and beards.

But these were not average members of the Free Syrian Army. Abu Khuder and his men fight for al-Qaida. They call themselves the ghuraba’a, or “strangers”, after a famous jihadi poem celebrating Osama bin Laden’s time with his followers in the Afghan mountains, and they are one of a number of jihadi organisations establishing a foothold in the east of the country now that the conflict in Syria has stretched well into its second bloody year.

They try to hide their presence. “Some people are worried about carrying the [black] flags,” said Abu Khuder. “They fear America will come and fight us. So we fight in secret. Why give Bashar and the west a pretext?” But their existence is common knowledge in Mohassen. Even passers-by joke with the men about car bombs and IEDs.

According to Abu Khuder, his men are working closely with the military council that commands the Free Syrian Army brigades in the region. “We meet almost every day,” he said. “We have clear instructions from our [al-Qaida] leadership that if the FSA need our help we should give it. We help them with IEDs and car bombs. Our main talent is in the bombing operations.” Abu Khuder’s men had a lot of experience in bomb-making from Iraq and elsewhere, he added.

Abu Khuder spoke later at length. He reclined on a pile of cushions in a house in Mohassen, resting his left arm which had been hit by a sniper’s bullet and was wrapped in plaster and bandages. Four teenage boys kneeled in a tight crescent in front of him, craning their necks and listening with awe. Other villagers in the room looked uneasy.”

Caroline Stern, 55, and her boyfriend George Hess, 54, claim they were handcuffed for having happy feet on the platform of the Columbus Circle subway station — and spent 23 hours in custody as a result.

“I’m a dentist, and I’m 55, and I got arrested for dancing,” Stern told The Post. “It was absolutely ridiculous that this happened.”

It was nearly midnight when Stern and Hess, a film-industry prop master, headed home last July from Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Midsummer Night’s Swing. As they waited for the train, a musician started playing steel drums on the nearly empty platform and Stern and Hess began to feel the beat.

“We were doing the Charleston,” Stern said. That’s when two police officers approached and pulled a “Footloose.”

“They said, ‘What are you doing?’ and we said, ‘We’re dancing,’ ” she recalled. “And they said, ‘You can’t do that on the platform.’ ”

The cops asked for ID, but when Stern could only produce a credit card, the officers ordered the couple to go with them — even though the credit card had the dentist’s picture and signature.

When Hess began trying to film the encounter, things got ugly, Stern said.

“We brought out the camera, and that’s when they called backup,” she said. “That’s when eight ninja cops came from out of nowhere.”

Hess was allegedly tackled to the platform floor, and cuffs were slapped on both of them. The initial charge, according to Stern, was disorderly conduct for “impeding the flow of traffic.”

“There was nobody on the platform. There were, like, three people,” she said.

The charges, including resisting arrest, were later dropped. The couple has filed a Manhattan federal court suit against the city for unspecified damages.

“If you are surrounded by good musicians, that’s going to make you want to dance,” Stern said. “The musician who is playing is legal, but . . . we’re illegal?”

The avid hoofers frequently go out on the town to boogie.

“When you’re waiting for the subway late at night, there’s not much to do but dance and celebrate life,” she said.

The city Law Department is reviewing the court papers, a spokeswoman said.

If you don’t know the Antonio Buehler story, I have posted some information below this new video of Antonio Buehler addressing Austin officials. Make sure to see his credentials at the bottom. He’s a CEO, a teacher, a war veteran, a Stanford and West Point graduate with accolades and he works with disadvantaged children. The Austin Police Department’s lies are helping no one. Their denial of any wrongdoing and refusal to release the dash cam video will only continue to encourage an antagonistic relationship between the community and the police. The more animosity and resentment the public feels towards the cops, the more danger police put themselves in.

The original news report.

You may not be a fan of Alex Jones, but the following is the most comprehensive interview.

After midnight on New Years of this year, war veteran Antonio Buehler witnessed Austin police officers being unnecessarily rough with a female at a gas station.

The police had pulled over a car containing two females and began to question the driver. The passenger yelled to her friend that she did not have to take a sobriety test. The police claimed the passenger’s right to free speech was an interference. One of the two cops, Oborski, ripped the female out of the car, eliciting a scream from the victim. She was then cuffed and held by both cops in a “pain compliance” move that reminds me of strappado, a medieval Inquisition torture technique that was used in torture chambers.

A form of torture in which the victim’s hands are first tied behind his or her back and suspended in the air by means of a rope attached to wrists, which most likely dislocates both arms. Weights may be added to the body to intensify the effect and increase the pain.

Photo by Antonio Buehler

Photo of female being mistreated by aggressive cops on New Years Day, a little after midnight. Photo by Antonio Buehler.

When Antonio saw this happening, he pulled out his mobile phone and began taking photos.

“We pull out our cameras and try to take pictures with our cell phones,” he said. “She sees me taking pictures and says, ‘please, take pictures and videos.’

If you thought the bizarre power trip behavior of the TSA couldn’t get any crazier – think again. According to a friend of political commentator Lew Rockwell, the federal agency is now ordering travelers passing through security to “freeze” on command.

Explaining how he had arranged with his family to split up as they were passing through airport security, the correspondent, whose story is posted at LewRockwell.com, explains how he heard a commotion from a different security lane.

“We heard a “freeze, freeze” or something like this coming from the output side of (false) security (where my wife was), followed by further barking of commands. From where I was, I couldn’t see much.”

“It turns out they were doing a new drill. They want all passengers to freeze on command. My wife told me later that she didn’t follow this order fast enough, so the subsequent barks I heard were directed at her.”

TSA supervisors expressed little other than disinterest when the man’s wife complained at being ordered around in such an overbearing manner.

“I think back to when I was a child, playing and wrestling in the back of the station wagon on long trips – no seatbelts or child seats. Now we get yelled at in the airport. I don’t feel safer,” the post concludes.

If accurate, the new policy represents yet another pointless exercise of power that seems designed to achieve little else than harassing travelers and treating them like prisoners by aggressively demanding immediate subservience.

As we reported yesterday, the TSA is now demanding the right to test drinks purchased by passengers after they have already passed through airport security. The new policy serves only to further inconvenience travelers who have already gone through humiliating grope downs and body scanners.

In a subsequent response, the federal agency argued that the bizarre measure was important because “unpredictable measure(s)” are necessary to snare would be criminals and terrorists.

Presumably, these “unpredictable measures” now also include barking degrading orders at travelers as if they were misbehaving middle school children on a class trip.

“We’re doing patrols in the parking lot with dogs, we’re even going as far out to the train station because the train station is connected to the airport here and we have guys walking around the train station, walking around the rental cars, we’re inspecting cars coming into the parking garage, I mean we’ve fully expanded – we’re no longer just at the gate and just at the security checkpoint,” the whistleblower said.

We have contacted the TSA to ascertain whether the order for travelers to “freeze” on command was a one off incident, what its purpose was, and whether such behavior will now form part of the TSA’s security procedures.

*********************

Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show and Infowars Nightly News.